A temporary detention involves a police officer holding and questioning an individual for a short amount of time. The police only need reasonable suspicion for a detention. Detentions may be accompanied by some form of search or frisk, though not all detentions will involve a search. Detentions can be initiated by an officer or dispatched in response to a call.
This analysis is based on records of temporary detentions made by the City of Charlottesville Police. The data was received in response to Freedom of Information Act requests (by – attribution for requesting?) made over multiple time periods. We have aggregated the data to two primary time periods:
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We recoded the offense generating the detention as recorded in the data into the following categories: (1) Narcotics Investigations, (2) Suspicious Circumstances, (3) Disorderly conduct (including drunkeness), (4) Crimes on persons (e.g., assult, robbery, weapons), (5) Crimes on property (e.g., burglary, vandalism, trespassing), (6) Traffic-related events (e.g., traffic stops, violations, accidents), and (7) everything else (e.g., assistance, unidentified).